By investing the Palestinian cause with such monumental importance, politicians and polemicists mistake a regional quarrel for a global struggle. Even before the state of Israel was founded more than 70 years ago, Arab regimes and their Western sympathizers began pushing a narrative that the proverbial “Arab street” is stirred by nothing more deeply than the fate of Palestine. Yet, as the so-called “Arab Spring” demonstrated, what really motivates the Arab masses are not Israeli settlements in the West Bank but the daily indignities of their own lives, blame for which lies with their rulers, not the Jews. And as for those rulers, Shia Iran’s growing assertiveness on a variety of fronts — a nuclear program on the threshold of weaponization, suborning the genocidal Assad regime, fueling the ruinous war in Yemen — has led the Sunni Arab states to reach a historic realignment with the nation they used to lambaste as “the Zionist entity.”

The human cost of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is also marginal compared with other contemporaneous world conflicts. Since five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish state in 1948, the total number of casualties incurred on both sides pales in comparison to the lives lost in the Congolese civil war, the Russian carpet-bombing of Chechnya, or North Korea’s politically engineered famines. As you read this, some 1 million Uighur Muslims are languishing in Chinese reeducation camps, suffering a fate far more heinous than that endured by the average Palestinian.

The amount of global resources heaped upon the Palestinians appears wholly disproportionate when contrasted to the measly efforts expended upon other stateless peoples, like the Tibetans and Kurds, whose claims are at least as justified and whose tactics have been nowhere near as morally objectionable. (It was the Palestinians, after all, who pioneered the scourge of terrorism in the 1960s and ’70s.) And as for the argument that U.S. military aid to Israel validates heightened attention to the conflict, a comparison with U.S. commitments — in actual blood and treasure — to treaty allies in Europe and Asia renders it hollow.

That the Palestinians lack a state is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy largely of their own making. More than once have they been presented with the opportunity to create a sovereign country alongside Israel; each and every time they responded with violence. On the long and growing list of world problems, the absence of a Palestinian state ranks somewhere between the conflicts over Transnistria and Western Sahara, neither of which you are likely to read about on newspaper front pages.

When they arrived in Israel, my grandparents did not see themselves as Palestinian Jews—they had never before lived in Mandatory Palestine. They saw themselves as Jews of Iraqi descent returning to the ancient homeland they and their ancestors had dreamed of and prayed of for thousands of years, the land from which they were once expelled and to which they were overjoyed to return. And they also understood themselves to be distinct from their Ashkenazi brothers and sisters: They were all Jews, but my grandparents were proud of their Mizrahi heritage just as the 200,000 Israelis of Ethiopian descent are proud of theirs.

Lamont Hill ignores all that. He also turns the imperial narrative on its head, accusing Israel of the crimes that were, in reality, committed by its Arab neighbors in the name of pan-Arabism. Since the 20th-century rise of pan-Arabism, leaders advocated Arabization policies of indigenous national groups—whether the Kurds, the Berbers, the Arameans, or the Sudanese—and sought to permanently reduce the status and power of indigenous religious groups, such as the Copts and Maronites, across the region. This sort of abuse goes on: Two decades ago, there were 1.4 million Christians living in Iraq; today, there are fewer than 250,000, an 80% drop. It’s precisely the same imperialist policy, intolerant of minorities, that drove my grandparents out all these decades ago.

You’d think that Lamont Hill, a self-proclaimed researcher of these topics, would know these facts. And you’d think that, as a self-described progressive, he’d at least listen to me as I shared my personal family history with him. He did not: In response to my article, Hill merely claimed that he studied Mizrahi Jews, and thus he knows better than me about my own community. It’s a statement that would make any decent person cringe. Imagine if I claimed that I studied racism and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and had the right to make any claim I wanted about the African American community, lecturing it about its own history. Lamont Hill, I suspect, would be rightly outraged, and yet he and many of his allies on the anti-Israel left expect the Jewish people to sit back and listen to him—a man who doesn’t speak the language, hasn’t lived in the region, and doesn’t understand the culture—lecture us on our history and our identity.

In the wake of some of Lamont Hill’s recent controversial statements about Israel, several leading Jewish voices, including Peter Beinart, rushed to defend Lamont Hill against charges of anti-Semitism. It is hard, however, to see how distorting Jewish history and silencing Jewish voices to promote a vicious and false charge could be construed as anything but.

A new bill pending approval by the Irish government is just a few steps away from becoming law.

The proposed law would make it illegal for Irish citizens to buy goods and services from Israeli citizens in what they define as the occupied territories. That would make it illegal to buy an ice cream, a postcard or a bottle of water in the old city of Jerusalem.

Irish citizens Karen and Norman Ievers along with their twins Natalie and Nathaniel visit Israel often and would be significantly affected by the law

“We bought ice cream and we bought water here in the old city next to the Jaffa Gate and if this bill passes what we just did would be illegal,” Karen told CBN News.

“It’s an infringement upon our freedoms,” Normal added. “I just hope it won’t hurt anybody and that it won’t hurt Ireland.”

The bill is called the “Control of Economic Activity (in) Occupied Territories”. If convicted under the bill, an Irish citizen could be fined more than a quarter of a million dollars and spend up to five years in jail.

“The proposed Irish law is the most extreme anti-Israel legislation proposed anywhere outside the Arab league,” said Prof. Eugene Kontorovich. “If you come to the holy city and you buy some holy water, if you buy a Jewish prayer shawl or religious books and bring them back to Ireland, bang, jail.”

Prof. Kontorovich says the bill targets Israel.

“What’s shocking about this law is that it’s clearly discriminatory in nature. So, they say, ‘We consider this occupied territory. We have a problem with occupied territory.’ But other than the fact that it’s not occupied territory, the law does not apply to any other people or group other than Jews in their biblical homeland.”

The thousands of fans and media who arrived and spent the week in Tel Aviv experienced the city in all its 24-hours-a-day fun splendor, proving in part the best hasbara (public diplomacy) Israel can put forth is hosting guests to see the country for themselves. Streets, restaurants, bars and beaches were full of celebrants witnessing a confident, exuberant country. And the sizable gay following that Eurovision attracts was able to witness the freedom that Israel offers to its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inhabitants.

As StandWithUs Executive Director Michael Dickson wrote this week in the Post, “Israel’s humanity was on display. Viewers in their millions got a taste of what the Israeli people are like and in the hosts – Israeli diversity too, hailing from different backgrounds, Arab and Jewish, straight and gay. The truth shone through – that in Israel, quiet coexistence happens every day.”

Attempts by Iceland’s entry and by one of Madonna’s dancers to inject politics into the event by brandishing Palestinian flags proved more of a distraction than a problem. Displaying a Palestinian flag alongside an Israeli flag is totally commendable, but not at an event that has not an iota of political blood in its system. Ultimately, Eurovision proved that it’s possible to stage an international event that could emphasize Israel without the need to mention Palestine in the same breath.

Claims of Israel trying to whitewash its problems ring false. Eurovision is simply not the forum for that, and no other country that has hosted the competition chose to display its shortcomings.

Israelis themselves are quick to criticize their country’s institutions and each other. Perhaps one of the hidden benefits of Eurovision is that it enabled us to see the country – its beauty, its achievements and its people – through the eyes of its visitors.

We can relish in the glory of our Eurovision winner from last year, Netta, and empathize with this year’s entry Kobi Marimi, who despite placing dismally in the standings, endeared himself to the hometown crowd with his heartfelt performance. And we can take pride in the performance of the Shalva Band, who displayed what true resilience and determination is to 200 million viewers.

Rather than relying on the standard “yihye b’seder” (everything will be okay), the hundreds of people who worked on the Eurovision production left nothing to chance, and in the end, produced an event that was a sight to behold and music to the ears.

Israel is the only place “in the world to give the intelligence community the job of bringing large groups” of a specific population sector to another country to save them from persecution through secret dangerous operations, says Maj. (ret.) Yochi Erlich of the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center. An up-coming exhibition at the center will tell the tale of the Mossad’s clandestine role in saving Jews under oppression in foreign lands.

Ibrahim Barzilai, now 93, was one of 20 Mossad agents brought in during 1955-6 to train and organize local Jewish communities in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. All of the Mossad agents were married and sent as couples. Barzilai said the Mossad ran two full-time laboratories for cranking out a massive number of forged passports.

In 1957, when Morocco formally closed off legal aliyah to Israel, the Mossad exploited an area of Morocco which had remained officially part of Spain. Once they got the Moroccan Jews into the Spanish area, they would legally be in Spain and could make aliyah to Israel. Jews were also smuggled into France via Algeria, which was still officially French at the time.

In March, the Holy See announced its plan to make available to researchers the archives of the papacy of Pius XII, which lasted from 1939 to 1958. These documents may provide answers to many questions about the Church’s conduct during World War II; Toni Kamins points to one in particular:

Foremost among the lingering questions that Jewish leaders hope will be resolved by the newly opened archives are the names and birthplaces of Jewish children placed for safekeeping with Catholic families or Catholic institutions (monasteries, convents, schools) during the war. Many of those children were converted to Catholicism, an act that may have helped save their lives. But prominent Jewish leaders like Abraham Foxman, former head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) [who was himself such a hidden child], believe that even after the war, when it was safe to come out of hiding, most were not told they were Jews. In many instances, the children were the only members of their families to survive—but there were other cases where surviving relatives did exist, and sought in vain for the remnants of their devastated families. . . .By late 1945 and early 1946, Jewish organizations, largely led and funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), estimated that around 10,000 of those survivors were in Catholic institutions or with non-Jewish families, and set out to find as many of them as possible.

The notion that anti-Semitism was somehow lying dormant until January 2017 and that throwing the most pro-Israel administration to date out of office and replacing it with the party that is prepared to tolerate the likes of boycott, divestment and sanctions movement supporters and anti-Semites like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) will make Jews safer strains credulity.

In an era of almost unprecedented levels of partisanship, and in which Americans view those with different political views with the same sort of suspicion they once reserved for believers in other religious faiths, it would seem that Jews – who, along with African-Americans are among the most reliable supporters of the Democrats –are also prepared to believe the worst of those on the other side of the political divide. That doesn’t give Trump or the Republicans much reason for optimism in 2020 with respect to a Jewish community that seems to subscribe to the “everyone I don’t like is Hitler” view of politics.

There is, however, one reason for a sliver of hope for Republicans in the future. Greenberg’s summary notes that Jewish millennials are, like other young voters, more inclined to be culturally liberal. Yet the divide in other groups shows that older voters are more conservative and inclined to support Trump. However, in the Jewish population, it’s the reverse; older Jews are more against the president than the young, even among non-Orthodox. Trump’s levels of support among Jewish millennials and Jewish voters under 30 are significantly higher than among those who are older, even if those that back him are still a clear minority.

When you factor in the fact that the Orthodox – a majority of whom back Trump – are the only demographic slice of the community that is actually growing, and that the non-Orthodox population is declining, it’s clear that the Democrats advantage among Jews is likely to decline in future elections.

But anyone wondering why the Democrats’ toleration of Omar and Tlaib in their ranks hasn’t moved the needle in terms of Jewish opinion need look no further than Greenberg’s findings about Jewish priorities. When Israel isn’t one, then there should be no surprise about the willingness of so many Jews to believe in unsubstantiated allegations about Trump’s anti-Semitism and to be indifferent to his Middle East policies.

In a video from a 1941 meeting between Adolf Hitler and Grad Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini, the leader of the Muslim population of Palestine is seen saluting to Hitler with his infamous salute.

The video was posted to Twitter by the American Zionism account in an apparent response to comments made recently by US Rep. Rashida Tlaib in which she said she felt “a calming feeling” that the Palestinians were able to “create a safe haven for Jews, post-Holocaust, post-tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time.”

I found a video 📽️of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini meeting with Hitler in 1941 and doing the Nazi salute. pic.twitter.com/lKopDezPGn

The comments were widely slammed by the Jewish community, arguing that they misconstrued the historical facts by insinuating the Arab population in Palestine at the time were friendly to the Jewish immigrants who had survived the Holocaust.

A YouGov survey has found that only 19% of British voters say that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party are not antisemitic.

Just 18 percent of voters say that the Labour Party does not have a problem with antisemitism, while 50 percent think that it does.

The polling shows that in the past year, approximately a further 5% of the public has lost confidence in Mr Corbyn over this matter, reducing those who support him on this issue to less than 20% of the population.

Some of the other key findings for all voters are that:

80 percent say that they had seen either a little or a lot of news coverage about antisemitism in the Labour Party. Campaign Against Antisemitism has been at the forefront of exposing antisemitism in the Party in the national media.

36 percent of all British voters say that Mr Corbyn is antisemitic and 28 percent say that the Labour Party is antisemitic. Only 19 percent say that neither are antisemitic.

65 percent believe that Mr Corbyn’s handling of antisemitism accusations has been incompetent while only 16 per cent think that he has been competent.

60 percent say that Mr Corbyn has been neither honest nor transparent in responding to accusations of antisemitism in the Labour Party, with only 18 percent thinking that he has been honest and transparent.

Only 27 percent agree that Labour MPs who are concerned about antisemitism in the Party should remain in the Party nonetheless. So far, just eleven MPs have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism. They have been joined by numerous councillors and members.

A banner emblazoned with the words “Honor to Mussolini,” unfurled just steps from the Milan piazza where the fascist dictator’s body was hung upside down after his 1945 execution. One-armed salutes and fascist slogans shouted at protests. Italy’s right-wing interior minister skipping commemorations for the 74th anniversary of the country’s liberation from Nazi occupation.

Fascist symbols, rhetoric and salutes — long a public taboo — have made their way out of the hooligan sections of soccer stadiums and into Italian streets in the run-up to this week’s European Parliament elections.

The leader of the right-wing party leading in the Italian polls, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, has faced criticism for perceived complacency toward neo-fascist extremists in his bid to see his once regionally based League party finish No. 1 in Italy, and perhaps Europe, when Italians vote Sunday.

Salvini, who has attracted the admiration of European far-right leaders for his anti-immigrant, anti-Islam stances, makes a show of dismissing extremist labels and the existence of fascist ideology on the Italian political spectrum.

Last November 12, EU co-operation officials in the Palestinian Arab territories and the EU Education Agency’s officials launched the new Erasmus program between European and Palestinian Arab universities in Ramallah. Among the European academia involved there are Cork (Ireland), Siena (Italy), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Evora (Portugal) and the Union of the Mediterranean Universities in Rome.

Siena is the first in the world to send students to the Islamic University of Gaza. A Siena delegation even visited the University of Gaza.

Except that the University of Gaza is not like the others.

“The university presents the philosophy of Hamas”, Jameela El Shanty, a professor at that university and politician in Gaza, told the Baltimore Sun. Founded by the Sheikh of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, the university was accused by Israel of turning its laboratories into rocket factories, as well as serving as a venue for secret meetings of military leaders.

This is why Israel hit it in 2009. Al Fatah – the rival of Hamas – confiscated weapons from that university. Former Israeli intelligence officer Jonathan Halevi said the university is a “Hamas indoctrination” center. American MPs made interpolations on that university and Fatah accused Hamas of hiding Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit there.

Student government representatives at the University of California, Los Angeles, passed a resolution on Tuesday rejecting “misinformation” against the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group — including claims that it promoted antisemitic content, UCLA’s student-run Jewish newspaper Ha’Am News reported.

The resolution focused on condemning the Canary Mission website, which lists students and faculty members that promote the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, as well as materials distributed by the David Horowitz Freedom Center against campus groups, including SJP and the Muslim Students Association.

More controversially to some students, the resolution also included language criticizing UCLA Chancellor Gene Block for issuing “marginalizing statements” about SJP — namely, a 2018 op-ed he published expressing disagreement with the group and the BDS campaign that it supported.

Block also made claims in the op-ed “that allude to the content of SJP’s national conference as being anti-Semitic without evidence to support those claims, ostracizing and stigmatizing the conference and attendees,” the resolution maintained.

SJP’s national conference was hosted at UCLA this November, with conference organizers calling for Zionism — a movement that recognizes the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination — to “be destroyed.” The group’s UCLA chapter was involved in the forceful disruption of an event held by the school’s Students Supporting Israel (SSI) group last May.

E. decided to withdraw from NYU and attend Stern College, the women’s campus of Yeshiva University. Professor Phyllis Chesler shared with Arutz Sheva the letter E. wrote to the university in order to communicate her decision:

To whom this may concern:

I have decided to withdraw from NYU beginning in the Fall of 2019. This decision is made with real sadness as I was very excited to apply early decision to NYU and have looked forward to attending for a many years.

My family has a long connection to NYU going back to my great-grandfather X who founded the department of music and was a professor at NYU for many decades. Notably, when my great-grandparents passed, they asked that their ashes be sprinkled around Washington Square Park due to their close connection with NYU.

Unfortunately, it appears the NYU my family has known is changing. It has now become clear to me that as a Jew, if I were to attend NYU I would be affiliating myself with an institution that accommodates faculty members and student organizations that are dedicated to anti-Semitic ideologies.

Some on your campus differentiate between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, however, I am not one of those people. This age-old hatred of my people wears different disguises in different generations but it’s root objective is always the same.

I will not stand by as it is allowed to take form at NYU and will certainly not attend an institution where my core beliefs and very existence is being threatened.

Wildfires in the Jerusalem area on Friday ravaged one of Israel’s prettiest and largest memorial forests.

The fires, aided by a scorching heat of over 104ºF (40ºC) and eastern winds, consumed the Jewish National Fund’s forest around the Kdoshei Zaglambia Holocaust monument, Ynet reported.

Situated on the western slopes of the Judean Hills, the forest planted decades ago for Polish victims of the genocide has a unique biodiversity owing to its location on the seam line connecting Israel’s humid coastal plain to its mountainous and arid interior.

On Friday, the fire was still raging across large areas of the coastal plain and creeping uphill in the direction of the Ben Shemen Forest. Mevo Modi’im, located 15 miles east of Tel Aviv, saw several of its homes destroyed, as did Kibbutz Harel near Ashdod, south of Tel Aviv.

Politicians on the extreme right raised the topic of property restitution ahead of this week’s elections for the European Parliament. The vote in Poland is being held Sunday.

Members of a far-right coalition called the Confederation are protesting American legislation meant to ensure that survivors of World War II or their heirs receive compensation for their losses. According to the law, the U.S. secretary of state is to prepare a progress report this year on the fate of property left behind during the war in 46 countries, including Poland.

The debate led to sparring between the ruling right-wing Law and Justice Party here and the opposition. One opposition leader, former prime minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, refuted the claims of the right-wing critics of property restitution by saying “nobody will take away from the heirs the right to go to court and claim their property.”

Cimoszewicz also criticized the right for claiming that “world Jewish organizations” would claw back property not claimed by actual heirs. Property with no living heirs will not be passed on to anyone, he said, and would remain the property of the Polish state.

A man accused of showering the prominent French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut with antisemitic insults on the fringes of a demonstration in Paris last February appeared in court on Wednesday.

Prosecutors demanded a six-month suspended sentence and a $50,000 fine for Benjamin Weller — a 26-year-old convert to Islam and an activist with the populist “yellow vests” movement. Weller was prominent among the small crowd of protesters who rounded on Finkielkraut after they spotted him near his Paris home during a demonstration on Feb. 6. Insults and slogans thrown at the philosopher by Weller and his comrades included, “dirty Zionist,” “dirty race,” Zionist sh*t,” “God will punish you,” and, “France is ours!”

Asked by the presiding magistrates to explain his actions, Weller insisted that he had merely been trying to tell Finkielkraut “my positions.”

Claiming that he was an “anti-Zionist” not hostile to Jews in general, Weller told the court about the “influence of Zionism … there are lobbies in France, who run France.”

Pressed on whether he believed that France was governed by a “Zionist lobby,” Weller replied, “Yes, a Zionist lobby that stigmatizes us. The ‘yellow vests’ are also against the Zionist lobby.”

The “influence of Zionism on French politics … hurts everyone,” he continued.

Sweden will host an international conference against anti-Semitism in memory of the Holocaust in October 2020, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced Friday.

The gathering heads of state and government will be held in Malmo, southern Sweden, on October 27 and 28 — 20 years after the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust and 75 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“You find anti-Semitism in Sweden, in Europe and all over the world. Anti-Semitism isn’t only a Jewish problem, it is a poison for all of society,” Stefan Lofven told AFP in an interview.

He had previously expressed his willingness to host a major conference on anti-Semitism.

But the official announcement, at the end of the campaign for the European elections, also served as a reminder that they are “all the more important as the election is a referendum on populist forces.”

“It’s a choice of values, for equal rights, it’s about standing up for your beliefs,” he added.

“There should never be any doubt that the Social Democrats stand up against antisemitism,” she added. “If these values ​​are not followed, the party leadership must take a clear stand. This is Stefan Lofven’s position.”

According to our 2018 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, there were 2,041 antisemitic incidents in Canada last year. 80% of them took place on social media.

Launched in 2017, a weekly newsletter from a coalition of establishment Jewish and pro-Israel groups has been providing talking points on anti-Semitism and the delegitimization of Israel to a select list of Jewish influentials.

The Focus Project, according to its director of strategic communications, Scott Piro, provides “collective, nonpartisan guidance to members of the community who choose to subscribe to our list,” and that all partner groups have an “equal voice” in shaping the messaging.

Those partner groups are the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the Anti-Defamation League — along with StandWithUs and The Israel Project, two groups known for their sharp-elbowed defense of Israel’s government and pushback against Israel’s critics.

Dovid Efune, the editor in chief of The Algemeiner, a Jewish newspaper with an editorial stance generally seen as right of center, has advised the effort in a personal capacity, according to Piro.

But the newsletter’s language recently led the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, or JCPA, an umbrella group of local Jewish public policy organizations, to remove its name from the newsletter’s masthead, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has learned from sources familiar with the matter.

JTA also learned from multiple sources that the decision, made in April, followed an internal conversation among JCPA leadership and a number of Jewish community relations professionals under the JCPA umbrella.

The decision reflected the discomfort of professionals who felt that the newsletter focused more on pro-Israel advocacy than anti-Semitism, and was too quick to call anti-Israel activity anti-Semitic.

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has adopted the International Definition of Antisemitism.

Campaign Against Antisemitism applauds the decision which demonstrates the Church of Scotland’s solidarity with the Jewish community in Scotland at this worrying time.

Reverend Dr Richard Frazer, Convener of the Church and Society Council, put forward the proposal to adopt the definition and noted that “antisemitic incidents in the UK are at a record high for the third year in a row.” His motion said that adopting the definition would “aid the Church in challenging antisemitism.”

Britain was the first country in the world to adopt the Definition, something for which Campaign Against Antisemitism, Lord Eric Pickles and others worked hard for over many meetings with officials at Downing Street. The Church of Scotland’s move follows adoption of the definition by the Church of England in September last year.

Ultra-Orthodox “Marathon Mother” Beatie Deutsch from Jerusalem has had a stellar career full of firsts, since discovering her talent for running at age 26 and wowing crowds by completing a full marathon while seven months pregnant.

She has won the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem marathons as well as the national championship. This week she became the first ultra-Orthodox woman to win an international athletics competition, finishing first among the women in Sunday’s 21-kilometer (13-mile) half-marathon race in Riga, Latvia, clocking at 1 hour, 17 minutes and 34 seconds.

Deutsch, who is known for running in modest clothing including a skirt, sleeves below her elbow, and headscarf, is now eyeing her next goal: the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

But for Deutsch, her career is about much more than running and smashing stereotypes.

Since December 2017 — when her husband’s cousin Daniella Pardes, 14, died by suicide after a struggle with anorexia nervosa — Deutsch has been using her running to raise awareness and funds for a new day center called Beit Daniella, a rehabilitation facility for adolescents with eating disorders and other psychiatric disorders who have been hospitalized or dropped out of school.

Twenty years ago, a baby girl, Balkis, was taken to Israel to undergo critical surgery. Balkis had been born with a severe congenital heart defect, and in her native Zanzibar she could not receive the proper treatment.

However, only a couple of years before, in 1995, an Israeli non-profit organization, Save a Child’s Heart, had been established precisely with the mission of providing high-quality medical care for children from developing countries.

Balkis was therefore flown to Israel and hospitalized at the Wolfson Medical center in Holon. After the surgery, she made a full recovery and returned to Zanzibar. But when her daughter Fatma, now one-year-old, was diagnosed with the same heart defect, once again the doctors in Zanzibar could not help and Save a Child’s Heart offered their assistance.

Fatma was the 5,000th patient who underwent a life-saving procedure at the hands of the organization’s doctors, the NGO announced on Wednesday.

“I never thought I would make the journey from Africa to Israel again,” Balkis said, according to a statement released by Save a Child’s Heart. “I already owe my life to this incredible NGO and now that they have saved my baby, I owe them my happiness as well. We are going back to Zanzibar soon, but a piece of our hearts will always stay in Israel.”

Save a Child’s Heart has treated children from 59 countries, including more than 2,500 Palestinian patients from the West Bank and Gaza. All patients are treated free of cost.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday met with the son of the Air France pilot who, along with his crew, insisted on remaining with Israeli and Jewish hostages after pro-Palestinian terrorists hijacked his flight and diverted the plane to Entebbe Airport in Uganda in 1976.

Pilot Michel Bacos died in March at the age of 95. His son Eric, met with Netanyahu at his office in Jerusalem. Earlier, he accepted an honorary award on behalf of his father at the Israel Aviation Conference in Tel Aviv.

The prime minister’s brother, Yoni (Yonatan), was killed leading the Israeli commandos who flew to Entebbe and carried out a daring mission to rescue the captives.

Bacos told Netanayhu that even 40 years later his family owes a great debt and appreciation for the IDF operation and Yoni’s actions. He also confirmed to the prime minister that his father had requested that the Israeli national anthem be played during his funeral.

Netanyahu expressed his regret at the death of the pilot.

PM Netanyahu heard from Eric that the Israeli anthem was played at his father’s funeral and said that Michel Bacos was very brave. Eric added that even after 40 years his family owes a debt of gratitude and appreciation to the IDF operation and the actions of Yoni Netanyahu. pic.twitter.com/2TnMsJHRuR

Don’t Israel haters love to claim that Israeli “settlements” steal all the water for their pools, while Palestinians don’t get any water?

These pools don’t look like they are filled with sewage.

It’s almost as if the reporters from Gaza are not telling us the whole story about water.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

]]>http://246mag.com/at-least-the-poor-thirsty-gazans-have-swimming-pools/feed0A rabbi pretends to defend Jews in @USAToday – but he ends up as guilty as the people he attackshttp://246mag.com/a-rabbi-pretends-to-defend-jews-in-usatoday-but-he-ends-up-as-guilty-as-the-people-he-attacks
http://246mag.com/a-rabbi-pretends-to-defend-jews-in-usatoday-but-he-ends-up-as-guilty-as-the-people-he-attacks#respondFri, 24 May 2019 18:00:00 +0000http://246mag.com/a-rabbi-pretends-to-defend-jews-in-usatoday-but-he-ends-up-as-guilty-as-the-people-he-attacks[...]]]>http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2019/05/a-rabbi-pretends-to-defend-jews-in.html

USA Today has an op-ed by Jason Kimelman-Block, who is a rabbi and Director of the “progressive” Bend the Arc Jewish Action.

The article pretends to be against weaponizing antisemitism from the Right. He has a point, but he undermines it by doing exactly what he blames the Right for doing – politicizing antisemitism instead of acknowledging it. In so doing, he is downplaying the experiences and alienating millions of Jewish Americans who are the victims of both left and right wing antisemitism.

…The pattern is by now quite clear. A Muslim member of Congress makes remarks about Israel. A conservative media outlet cherry picks a phrase, a couple of words, spinning opinion into news. Republican members of Congress — like Liz Cheney, Lee Zeldin, and Steve Scalise — launch disingenuous attacks on Twitter or in press releases. Conservative media —like Breitbart and The Federalist — pile on with front-page articles amplifying their blatantly false claims of anti-Semitism.

Then mainstream media outlets get in on the act, with more traditional platforms reporting on on the false accusations, lending them undue legitimacy. Even seemingly neutral headlines further the idea that the member of Congress has sparked a controversy, or is suddenly embattled, while allowing conservative voices to speak on behalf of the Jewish community. All that is before President Donald Trump jumps in with a tweet, continuing his offensive effort to push Jewish Americans to abandon the Democratic Party with fear-mongering and divisive rhetoric.

When Ilhan Omar made her comments about the “Benjamins,” she was not referring to Israel. She was referring to American Jews controlling Congress. She then went on to accuse Jews of having more loyalty to Israel than to America. Those, plus her “hypnotizing the world” statement, were undoubtedly antisemitic dog-whistles at the very least. To say that this is part of a pattern of remarks about Israel being treated falsely as antisemitism is a lie. To downplay them is to deny Jews the agency to decide for ourselves what is offensive to us – not viewed through the lens of partisanship but the reality of Omar’s statements.

Tlaib’s comment about the Holocaust was not antisemitic – but it was offensive to most Jews, nonetheless. She lied about a major event in Jewish history and downplayed her people’s complicity in historic Jew-hatred. The Arab hatred of Jews has cost the lives of tens of thousands of people. Historical revisionism is not something to be dismissed so readily.

Ignoring these real concerns about the statements from members of Congress is insulting.

Here’s how the distraction works: when the waters are muddied, we can no longer see clearly. When threats are everywhere, they are nowhere, and fear can be sown about anyone. Fingers will often point to Muslim or Black leaders, people who have long been scapegoated as a source of danger in our society, and who are thus easy targets for people’s fear.

This is really offensive. If I find someone saying something that insults me as a Jew, I will call it out – no matter what the color, religion, gender or party of the person who says it.

Kimelman-Block is accusing anyone who feels the way I do of being a bigot. Yet he is the one who is saying that the color of a person affects how we should respond to their words.

If racism is treating people differently because of their color, Kimelman-Block is the racist here.

In this way our attention can be shifted from the people responsible for unleashing a wave of white supremacist violence targeting our communities. That’s why within 24 hours of the shooting at Chabad of Poway there were members of Congress and conservative pundits who obscured the shooter’s white nationalist manifesto by directing blame on a Muslim member of Congress and a cartoon in the New York Times International Edition.

…Ultimately, all the faux outrage and manufactured smears have real life consequences: they reduce the time, attention, and resources devoted to tackling the real sources of anti-Semitism that are actively putting my community and others at greater and greater risk.

The best way to respond is to keep the focus where it belongs, on the radical ideology of white nationalism and its normalization in our politics, and to reject efforts to divide our communities from each other.

If anyone actually blamed the New York Times for Poway they are obviously wrong. But notice that Kimelman-Block doesn’t even characterize the NYT cartoon as antisemitic. His inability to even hint that there might be antisemitism outside the Right makes his entire essay an exercise in partisanship. It isn’t about antisemitism at all.

I care about the safety of Jews more than I care about American politics. There is no question that right-wing antisemitism is an immediate danger to Jewish lives – usually, only right-wingers have guns. But left-wing, black and Muslim antisemitism are each real and toxic in their own ways. All of them feed Jew-hatred throughout the nation and makes Jews feel marginalized. This includes those who single out the Jewish state for criticism that is out of proportion to even the worst crimes anyone can accuse it of. It is all the same unhinged hate and it should all be exposed for what it is, no matter who the perpetrator is.

Kimelman-Block is not speaking as a Jew, no matter where he got his rabbinical ordination from. He is speaking as a leftist. He is purposefully downplaying and ignoring the other threats to Jews because they do not come from the far-Right. He does not talk about the near-daily attacks on religious Jews in New York City by blacks. He does not even acknowledge the existence of antisemitism in left-wing circles, even though at the grassroots level it is quite loud and obvious, both in the US and overseas – the far-Left and the far-Right are virtually indistinguishable in Jew-hatred.

Not only that, but left-wing hatred of Israel directly fuels right-wing antisemitism – they routinely use biased Leftist sources like Max Blumenthal or Electronic Intifada to justify their own hate of Jews. The far-Right has embraced BDS just as enthusiastically as the Left. Pretending that the Right’s hate of Israel is somehow antisemitic while the exact same language from the Left is merely political is yet another example of Leftist blindness to the hate on its own side. The loathing of Israel by leftists is psychologically indistinguishable from the loathing of Jews by the neo-Nazis, and to think that they don’t have the same common denominator is to fool oneself.

Beyond that. Jews on campus feel real fear from the Israel-haters who intimidate them and who sometimes break out into violence. Kimelman-Block is minimizing and trashing the feelings of fear of hundreds of thousands of Jews for his own partisan reasons.

Kimelman-Block is weaponizing antisemitism just as much as he accuses the Right of doing, by implicitly saying that Jews who feel victimized by antisemitism from Muslims, BDSers, blacks or Arabs are actually making it all up or secretly in bed with Republicans or some other nonsense. Both sides are politicizing antisemitism, and the only victims are Jews who are being used as pawns for each side and whose actual concerns are being ignored by the parties who are guilty of whitewashing the hate on their own sides. This essay is just as much a whitewash and a politicization of Jew hatred as anything Trump has done.

If this leftist rabbi actually cared about Jews, this article would not be a polemic defending leftist antisemitism of Ilhan Omar, denying the historical revisionism of Rashida Tlaib, and minimizing the real fear of Jews who live in Brooklyn and Manhattan and on campus – while only going after his side’s political opponents.

Kimelman-Block is using his title of a rabbi not to defend Jews but to alienate them and to push his own politics. Don’t pretend to be speaking as a Jew when all you care about is hating Republicans and not caring about Jews.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

There is no time for a Good News Friday post today, and altogether with the country burning up in an extreme heat wave, with wildfires everywhere, it’s not the right time. But I wanted to leave you instead with some … Continue reading →

]]>http://246mag.com/shabbat-shalom-10/feed005/24 Links Pt1: U.S. Middle East Initiative, while Futile, Is Also a Breath of Fresh Air; What Would a Palestinian State Actually Look Like?; Dershowitz: Why is The NYTs Trying to Abort the Trump Peace Plan?http://246mag.com/0524-links-pt1-u-s-middle-east-initiative-while-futile-is-also-a-breath-of-fresh-air-what-would-a-palestinian-state-actually-look-like-dershowitz-why-is-the-nyts-trying-to-abort-the-trump-pea
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The Palestinian Authority has already made clear that it won’t negotiate on the basis of the new U.S. peace initiative. Under the current circumstances, Palestinian leadership and the political culture that sustains them simply won’t allow it. But that is not the only way to look at the plan.

By sticking to a plan that puts economics first and refusing to prioritize pandering to Palestinian intransigence, the U.S. is creating a template for peace that makes sense, one that is being welcomed by most of the Arab world. That means that even after they torpedo progress toward peace, it will be the Palestinians who will be more isolated than ever, not the U.S. Convening an economic summit in which Israelis and Arab states will openly work toward greater cooperation will enhance America’s standing in the region.

The Palestinians have already repeatedly rejected peace deals that would have given them statehood in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza, and a share of Jerusalem in 2000, 2001, and 2008. What’s more, they refused to negotiate seriously during Obama’s eight years in office despite his nonstop efforts to tilt the diplomatic playing field in the Palestinians’ direction.

The notion that the Sunni Arab states will blame the U.S. for trying to make a peace that the Palestinians will again reject is absurd. When the dust settles from the rollout of the American plan, the Arab states will be firmly in America’s corner no matter what the Palestinians do.

What would a Palestinian state actually look like? There have been four Palestinian quasi-states that provide ample data – in Jordan (1968-1970); in Lebanon (1970-1982); the Palestinian Authority in parts of the West Bank and Gaza (1993-onward); and the Hamas regime in Gaza (2007-onward). To the extent that the Palestinian movement has gained any semblance of self-rule and territorial control, it has built quasi-states that are militant and dictatorial – much to the detriment of the Palestinian people themselves.

Whenever the Palestinian movement has attained a modicum of self-rule over a stretch of territory, it has subjugated its own people and waged war against Israel. No honest error or inexperience with governance can explain this pattern. It reflects the ideas animating the leading factions of the Palestinian movement.

Some argue that we should suspend judgment until a sovereign, independent Palestinian state is realized. That’s absurd. Why expect that handing authoritarians and theocrats more political power will convert them into champions of individual freedom? The idea of national self-determination cannot be a license to subjugate. No self-identified national community has the moral right to create a tyrannical regime.

After last year’s grisly murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, it looked like it might be curtains for Saudi reformist crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, known as MBS, who was accused of ordering his killing. As I revealed last October, however, Khashoggi was no reformer but an Islamist extremist. A one-time friend of Osama bin Laden, he called on all Arabs to join the “resistance” against Israel; and he opposed MBS because he wasn’t jihadi enough. My own sources suggested the Khashoggi killing was an attempt by MBS to kidnap him back to Saudi Arabia that went badly wrong.

Until recently, Saudi Arabia was the principal exporter to the world of the Wahhabi strain of Islamic extremism, which has radicalized countless millions to the jihadi cause. Now, the kingdom is no longer trying so hard to do so. It has been almost completely replaced by Qatar as the main source of funding for global Islamist education, and Saudi newspapers regularly publish diatribes against Islamist extremism.

Does the Saudi thaw toward Israel go any deeper than a tactical alliance against a common foe – Iran? Some of what is now being said in the kingdom, necessarily with the tacit consent of its regime, goes further than might be expected from merely tactical considerations. During the most recent rocket onslaught from Gaza, several prominent Saudi journalists and intellectuals expressed support for Israel that went beyond merely blaming Turkey and Iran for being behind the attacks.

Saudi reform is moving at a glacial pace. With a population and culture steeped in Islamist fundamentalism and anti-Semitism, to move too fast would produce a violent backlash. But Saudi Arabia is inching in a direction that until very recently would have been thought utterly impossible. And that is a big deal. The writer is a columnist for The Times (UK).

Some of my reports about President Donald Trump’s peace envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, have been very critical. But despite those reports, I believe Greenblatt is far from being an enemy of the settlement enterprise, or of Israel.

I also happen to believe that Jason Greenblatt represents the first American administration which actually understands the Arabs, and has come up with a viable plan to rein them in for the sake of their own future and Israel’s.Advertisement

I believe that I understand Greenblatt’s plan and that it could work. I’m merely committed to pointing out the inevitable and sometimes terrifying risks to Israel and to the Jewish settlements in the liberated territories, which is the only thing I truly care about.

I’ll explain.

In a recent lecture at Tel Aviv University about the lessons of Oslo, Yaakov Amidror, a former major-general and National Security Advisor to several Israeli prime ministers, commented on the common Israeli complaint that the PLO never produced their own David Ben-Gurion, and therefore can’t make Ben-Gurion-type decisions, by which they refer to Israel’s political founder’s willingness to settle for less in order to gain more in the future.

According to Amidror, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat was every bit as able to make Ben-Gurion decisions as Ben-Gurion himself had been, but we can’t appreciate it because we don’t understand Arafat’s plans.

In 1992, Arafat was in a much worse position than Ben-Gurion had been in 1947, when he accepted the UN partition plan that awarded Israel less than half the territory of Mandatory Palestine. Ben-Gurion was already there, on the land – Arafat desperately needed to be allowed in.

And so, to Arafat, Amidror argued, embracing the Oslo agreements was his path to the promised land.

Arafat knew that everything he said about doves and olive branches and good neighbors was reversible, but his capturing of Judea, Samaria and Gaza could never be reversed.

Arafat in the Oslo story was the Trojan horse, while the entire Israeli political and military establishment played the role of the naïve Trojans.

No one ever lost money betting against peace between Israelis and Palestinians…. It would be far better if The New York Times waited until the plan was released and then commented on its specific provisions rather than stacking the deck against it by quoting only its most strident critics.

There are those who will criticize any plan, no matter how positive it may be, if it emanates from the Trump administration. When President Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, many Democrats who would have favored such moves if they had been done by Barack Obama, opposed them only because these same moves were done by President Trump. These Democrats do not want to see Trump succeed at anything, even if his success would be good for America, for Israel and for peace.

If the editors of The New York Times refuse to separate opinion and analysis from hard reporting, every reader has an obligation to make that separation for herself or himself. Bear this in mind when you read The New York Times.

In 2006, Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s opposition leader, captured the essence of the Arab-Israeli conflict in a single quote. “The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms, there would be no more Israel,” he said. “If the Arabs were to put down their arms, there would be no more war.” Netanyahu, now Israel’s prime minister, articulated a hard truth: much of the Middle East does not recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the region, and would gladly watch it disappear from existence.

Netanyahu’s quote also applies to the narrower Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, each year, the Palestinian Authority, or PA, allocates hundreds of millions of dollars of its budget to pay terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis. PA President Mahmoud Abbas has previously suggested that ensuring payments to terrorists is the PA’s top priority. Furthermore, under Palestinian law, selling or attempting to sell land to Jews is a crime, punishable by hard labor, imprisonment, and even execution. Most importantly, Palestinian leadership refuses to accept Jews’ right to self-determination. On numerous occasions, Abbas has said that the Palestinians will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, thus rejecting the basic premise of a two-state solution: two states for two peoples, one Arab and one Jewish. As I explained last month, “The Palestinians have repeatedly refused to compromise on any agreement that would acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, even if that agreement would also create an independent Palestinian state alongside it.” Israel has, multiple times, offered the Palestinians the best deal realistically possible, only to be rebuffed. The bottom line is this: the Palestinians have shown that thwarting Israel is more important than realizing their own goals. Until the Palestinians care more about their own happiness than denying Israelis theirs, there will never be peace.

The 72nd assembly of the U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO) voted 96-11 this week for a resolution, co-sponsored by the Arab bloc and the Palestinian delegation, which singled out Israel over “health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east[ern] Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

The assembly in Geneva gathers annually to discuss internal and external questions facing the U.N. health body, with topics including market transparency for medicines; vaccines and other health technologies; the rise of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; World Health Organization reforms; strategies for addressing snake bites; the shortfall of health workers; universal health coverage; and, finally, a condemnation of Israel for treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Syrians in the Golan Heights.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based non-governmental organization U.N. Watch, condemned the delegates’ abuse of the U.N. body as a forum to target Israel. “Singling out Israel is a perversion of the truth and a perversion of the values under which the World Health Organization was founded,” he told JNS.

“This is the annual meeting of health delegations around the world, focusing on communicable diseases like tuberculosis to AIDS, and suddenly, out of nowhere, there is this peculiar politicization where suddenly one country is singled out and effectively portrayed as the only violator of health rights,” he commented, calling it a “thinly veiled attempt to scapegoat Israel.”

“Out of 21 items on the meeting’s Agenda, only one—Item No. 14 against Israel—focused on a specific country. There was no agenda item or resolution on any other country, including Syria, where hospitals and medical infrastructure have suffered devastating bombings by Syrian and Russian forces; Yemen, where 19.7 million people lack access to health-care service due to the current crisis; or Venezuela, where the health system has collapsed, causing millions to flee the country.”

Jens Spahn, a prominent member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet, played a critical part in rolling-back Germany’s anti-Israel voting record for the first time at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

Hanno Kautz, a spokesman for Spahn, told The Jerusalem Post by email on Thursday, “Germany’s voting behavior during this World Health Assembly was closely coordinated by federal minister Spahn with federal minister Maas.”

Heiko Maas is the social democratic foreign minister in Merkel’s cabinet who has faced criticism from the Free Democratic Party for greenlighting scores of anti-Israel votes at the UN.

“The federal ministry of health is responsible for the World Health Organization and thus also for the positioning of Germany during the World Health Assembly in Geneva,” Kautz explained. “Federal minister Spahn is head of the German delegation at this year’s World Health Assembly and thus makes the final decision in close coordination with the ministries involved.”

Germany’s ambassador Michael Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg voted against the resolution titled “Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.

Spahn is member of the Christian Democratic Union party and was a candidate to succeed Merkel as chairperson of the party when she steps down in 2021. He lost a three-candidate contest to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in December.

Israel’s ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff tweeted: “I welcome Germany’s vote in WHO Geneva against a politically motivated one-sided resolution in the Palestinian context. This is a significant vote after the declaration by FM Heiko vMaas (11/5) on Israel’s role in UN fora and by virtue of Health Min[ister] Jens Spahn‘s important support.”

The UNHRC just released its Agenda for upcoming 41st Session opening on June 24th.

It has a separate agenda item focusing on a single nation—Israel—which does not occur in any other context, for any other country.

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg told a gathering of liberal Jews Thursday that the United States should pressure Israel to change its policies.

NBC News reported Thursday evening that “Buttigieg told a group of influential liberal Jewish leaders on Thursday that the United States should guide Israel’s government away from steps that he says are harmful to both the U.S. and Israel.”

NBC did not mention any particular particular Israeli policies that Buttigieg believes should be changed.

It also did not name any recognized “Jewish leaders,” but rather minor figures and political operatives, such as a Democratic pollster and a former Obama administration official, among a few others.

NBC reported that Buttigieg also criticized the Trump administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and to recognize Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights — both of which were welcomed by Israelis across the political spectrum.

According to NBC, Buttigieg called these steps “a decision to intervene in Israeli domestic politics through American policy,” and said the decisions should only have been taken in the context of peace negotiations. (Syria has refused to negotiate with Israel for decades; the Palestinians have also rejected peace negotiations for several years.)

The European media has speculated that immigration policy will cause Europeans to turn Right. According to Israeli officials, the results of the elections alone will increase the split in the EU.

French President Emmanuel Macron changed the voting rules in his country, abolished the electoral districts and established a European-French party. Therefore, the new parliament will contain a large French party, which has great influence. Lately, many new parties have popped up. In light of disagreements over immigration, or the fact that the EU is made up of 28 countries, the voter turnout which is yet unknown, and in light of difficulties in polling (this past week polls in Australia missed their mark), and the horribly complicated structure of the EU and other European institutions — these elections will most probably lead Europe toward a crisis or split.

What does that mean for Israel? It should be careful of any predictions, but there is a good reason to reckon that the final results of the election will improve EU-Israel relations. The past few years have revealed that the more Europeans are stuck dealing with domestic politics, the less likely they will be concerned with what happens in Israel.

The rules of the EU require member states to reach compromises and even a consensus. The wider the split grows – the more difficult it will be to pass resolutions and policies that are unfavorable to Israel. However, it will be even more difficult for relations to warm without a consensus of opinion. Also, the European Right is more favorable toward Israel, and this could make it easier for Israel in the long run.

A former Israeli envoy to the EU noted that “the attitude of the EU toward Israel is the least common denominator.” That is now irrelevant.

Israel is fast becoming NATO’s premier partner country. NATO can tap into over seven decades of counterterrorism experience, learn from a cyber powerhouse, and deepen intelligence ties with a tested and vibrant democracy perched on the shores of the Levantine powder keg. Living at close quarters with radical Islamist terrorists is business as usual for Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) can share invaluable experience in asymmetric warfare against terrorist armies that use its own population as human shields and can give crucial advice to NATO commanders as they face similar challenges. Israel has pioneered advanced techniques to help protect civilians in residential combat zones.

On countless occasions, Israel has fed NATO allies life-saving intelligence. Just last year, Israel prevented a blood bath at a political rally in Paris plotted by diplomats of the Iranian regime. Israeli warnings also foiled an ISIS attack at a soccer match between NATO ally Albania and Israel in 2016.

A few weeks ago, Egypt quietly announced its withdrawal from the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), a coalition—which also includes Jordan, the Gulf states, and the U.S.—founded at President Trump’s urging to serve as an “Arab NATO” that could work to contain Iran. Jonathan Ariel notes three major factors that most likely contributed to Egyptian President Sisi’s abandonment of MESA: his distrust of Donald Trump (and concern that Trump might lose the 2020 election) and of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman; Cairo’s perception that Iran does not pose a major threat to its security; and the current situation in Gaza:

Gaza . . . is ruled by Hamas, defined by its covenant as “one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.” Sisi has ruthlessly persecuted the Brotherhood in Egypt. [But] Egypt, despite its dependence on Saudi largesse, has continued to maintain its ties with Qatar, which is under Saudi blockade over its unwillingness to toe the Saudi line regarding Iran. . . . Qatar is also supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood, . . . and of course Hamas.

[Qatar’s ruler] Sheikh Tamim is one of the key “go-to guys” when the situation in Gaza gets out of hand. Qatar has provided the cash that keeps Hamas solvent, and therefore at least somewhat restrained. . . . In return, Hamas listens to Qatar, which does not want it to help the Islamic State-affiliated factions involved in an armed insurrection against Egyptian forces in northern Sinai. Egypt’s military is having a hard enough time coping with the insurgency as it is. The last thing it needs is for Hamas to be given a green light to cooperate with Islamic State forces in Sinai. . . .

Over the past decade, ever since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power, Israel has also been gradually placing more and more chips in its still covert but growing alliance with Saudi Arabia. Egypt’s decision to pull out of MESA should give it cause to reconsider. Without Egypt, MESA has zero viability unless it is to include either U.S. forces or Israeli ones. [But] one’s chances of winning the lottery seem infinitely higher than those of MESA’s including the IDF. . . . Given that Egypt, the Arab world’s biggest and militarily most powerful state and its traditional leader, has clearly indicated its lack of confidence in the Saudi leadership, Israel should urgently reexamine its strategy in this regard.

Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s first president to attend an Israel Independence Day ceremony this week.

An ardently pro-Israel Christian, the right-wing politician was honored at a Wednesday event marking Israel’s 71st anniversary at the Israeli embassy in Brasilia, where he received a commemorative plaque.

“What connects us to Israel is much more than what happens here today. Our friendship ties have never been stronger,” Bolsonaro declared.

“My first trip to Israel was chilling to my soul,” he added.

Several senior Brazilian politicians and officials attended the event, including the Brazilian Senate President Davi Alcolumbre and Supreme Court President Dias Toffoli.

“Brazil will always have open arms for the entire Brazilian and global Jewish community,” said Alcolumbre, who recently became the very first Jew elected to preside over the Brazilian Congress’s upper house.

Israel’s Ambassador Yossi Shelley highlighted the special relationship between both countries.

Focusing on May’s record on issues close to the heart of British Jews specifically, van der Zyl wrote recalled that her “government has adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism; marked the Balfour Centenary with pride; banned terror organization Hezbollah; increased security funding,” opposed “anti-Israel bias at the UN Human Rights Council,” among other policies,

The Conservative Friends of Israel, a parliamentary group, hailed May as a “steadfast supporter” of the Jewish state and “a champion” of British Jewry.

“Theresa May has fiercely fought anti-Jewish racism and it is thanks to her that the community has received record levels of financial support for its security at this difficult time,” the group’s parliamentary chairmen said in a statement.

“Under her leadership, the UK-Israel relationship has gone from strength to strength with record bilateral trade, the much anticipated first ever official visit to Israel by a member of the Royal Family took place, and the Hezbollah terror group was proscribed,” the statement added.

Wildfires raged across Israel on Friday for the second day in a row, as officials warned the public to stay away from parks and forests and an initial investigation indicated an electrical short sparked some of the blazes on Thursday.

Gripped by unseasonably scorching weather, a spate of fires across the country on Thursday devastated towns and forests, forcing thousands out of their homes.

The fires picked up again on Friday afternoon, when residents of Neguhot in the South Hebron Hills were evacuated by authorities after a wildfire threatened the settlement. The Israel Fire and Rescue Services later announced firefighters were able to contain the blaze and residents were allowed to return to their homes.

Fifteen people were being treated for smoke inhalation in Neguhot, according to the Israel Fire and Rescue Services, one of whom was hospitalized.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday thanked Egypt for sending two helicopters to back Israel’s firefighting efforts, and said the Palestinian Authority and Russia were among those that offered to help Israel battle a spate of wildfires that forced thousands from their homes a day earlier.

The prime minister also said he was considering expanding Israel’s squadron of firefighting planes, as neighboring countries dispatched backup aircraft to Israel, a day after the blazes devastated towns and forests.

As temperatures soared across the country on Friday afternoon, the wildfires picked up again.

Residents of Neguhot in the South Hebron Hills were evacuated by authorities after a wildfire threatened the settlement. Firefighters were working to extinguish a second fire raging near the West Bank settlement of Peduel.

Earlier in the day, Netanyahu and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan were briefed on the damage by firefighting and rescue officials.

“I am considering expanding the squadron, for both day and night operations, and other changes, and I certainly plan to implement it in the coming year,” said Netanyahu.

Israel Police officers on Friday morning arrested an Arab who was documented setting fire to a number of locations in Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus area, 0404 News reported.

The suspect was identified by lookouts and his actions were documented. Forces called to the area searched for and located the suspect, arresting him.

A security source told 0404 News that the arson was nationalistically motivated.

Separately, Walla! reported that Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael believes the Ben Shemen Forest fire, which devoured at least 30% of the forest, may have been arson. However, the investigation is still ongoing and official conclusions have not been released.

In addition to the Ben Shemen fire, thousands of dunams of forest in both the Eshtaol and Tsor’a areas have been destroyed.

The Palestinian government “will work on gradually disengaging from Israel,” PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh asserted on May 20. As its first step toward disengagement, the PA had decided to freeze issuing referrals to Palestinians seeking medical care in Israel.

“This is a game of false pride and honor,” a source in Israel’s Civil Administration said. “They are endangering the lives of the patients, mainly children and babies.”

The PA does not have many alternatives to the treatments provided by Israel for cancer patients or people suffering from genetic diseases, a relatively prevalent condition among local Palestinians due to marriage among close relatives.

The second stage of the Palestinian disengagement process is to encourage local production to halt reliance on importing products from Israel. But according to Israeli sources, the PA is disregarding the reality in which it lives. Most of the raw materials the PA imports arrive via Israeli seaports or airports. The PA does not have its own currency. The Israeli shekel is the official legal tender in the West Bank as well as in Gaza.

Because the Palestinian market is small and limited, the cost of production for creating alternative products would be high. Moreover, Palestinian consumers are familiar with Israeli products, and lower-quality, higher-priced alternatives will simply not survive market forces.

The U.S. has recruited Qatar, Bahrain and other wealthy Gulf states to provide financial backing for the peace plan it will unfurl next month. The commitment of the Gulf states to the U.S. is significant.

Abbas has almost no economic alternatives beyond Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and they are acting in their own interest to maintain good relations with the U.S. In other words: The Saudis and the Gulf states will not lift a finger to save Abbas from the dangerous corner that he is painting himself into.

When the US and Israel enacted legislation in 2018 to combat the Palestinian Authority’s “pay-for-slay” policy – a policy by which the PA squanders hundreds of millions of dollars every year to pay financial rewards to terrorist prisoners, released terrorist prisoners and the families of dead terrorists – many commentators responded by saying that the move would potentially negatively affect Israeli-Palestinian security coordination.

When the US passed the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA), which conditioned the provision of any aid to the PA on its acceptance of the jurisdiction of the US courts to hear cases against the PA for its involvement in terrorism, the PA responded by rejecting all the US aid, including the more than $60 million a year devoted to the security coordination.

The fear of negatively effecting the security coordination even spurred some to suggest an amendment to the ATCA to provide a loophole to continue funding the security coordination.

What these commentators fail to understand is that while Israel reaps the partial benefit of arresting Hamas terrorists, the security coordination is not in danger since it serves the PA and Fatah no less than it serves Israel.

Throwing money at the PA has always proved to be ineffectual at influencing its decisions. If Abbas decides to end the security coordination, he will do so as a result of his desire to reconcile with Hamas, and not because of any aid the PA may or may not be receiving.

A pro-Maduro protest was held in Ramallah outside the Venezuelan representative office. The protestors chanted: “Oh Hugo Chavez, oh martyr… We will not relinquish your goals… America, you are terrorism… To the dustbin with your Deal of the Century… Trample on those who normalize [relations with Israel] and on the spies.” Fatah Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen, who was present, conveyed a “message of solidarity” to the “brotherly” people of Venezuela. He said that he is convinced that the people and the army of Venezuela will rally around President Maduro and successfully thwart the American “plot” that is trying to “bring the world to its knees.” Muhaisen also said that the world is suffering because of the “stupid and crazy” President Trump. He saluted Maduro, the Venezuelan army, and the people of Venezuela and added that the Palestinian people pledge to “bring down” the Deal of the Century. The video of the protest was uploaded to the Internet on May 21, 2019.

Jamal Muhaisen: “In the name of Allah, the merciful, the Compassionate. Your excellency, my brother, the ambassador of brotherly Venezuela, we are here today – as political forces, civil society activists, and religious leaders – in order to convey a message of solidarity with the brotherly people in Venezuela, who are confronting this American attack that is targeting the regime and the people. We are convinced that the rallying of the army and the people around the Venezuelan leadership and around President Maduro will thwart this American plot, which is trying to bring the entire world down to its knees. Today, the entire world is suffering because of the U.S. president – a stupid and crazy president, who is trying to ignite conflicts all over the world.

“He has now become a threat to peace and security, not only in Venezuela and Latin America, or in the Arab Gulf, or in confronting Iran, China and Russia, but in confronting the world in its entirety. Just as we, the Palestinian people, pledge to bring down the Deal of the Century, we are convinced that the Venezuelan people, with its rallying around its leadership, and the Venezuelan army, with its rallying around its leadership, will also thwart this American plot to interfere in the internal affairs of the Venezuelan people. The Venezuelan people will remain – as we have always known them to be – a free people that does not accept being enslaved to the U.S. or to anyone else. We salute President Maduro, and we salute the Venezuelan army that has rallied around its leadership. We salute the Venezuelan people. We are convinced that the free people in the world will thwart all Trump’s plots, together with this entire fascist regime that leads the American administration today.”

Fatah Central Committee Member Jamal Muhaisen at Pro-Maduro Rally: The Whole World Suffers because of Crazy, Stupid Trump; We Salute Maduro pic.twitter.com/sGPTh1CbVg

Roughly 3,000 Palestinians clashed with IDF forces along the Gaza Security fence during Friday March of Return protests, Maariv reported.

Hamas officials are taking part in the violent clashes, which include throwing explosives on IDF soldiers and attempts to breach the fence.

A Palestinian medic was injured due to an IDF gas grenade East of khan Younis, Palestinian media reported. A yet unknown number of protesters was also injured.

The Friday protest takes place three days after Israeli media reported that an early agreement to a cease fire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas. These reports were quickly dismissed by both parties.

What if Gaza’s rulers actually fed their own people instead of spending all their money on rockets & terror tunnels, which cost tens of millions? https://t.co/t2vcWTw8sC

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has launched another conspiracy-theory laden attack on US policy toward his country, claiming that the Trump administration’s rhetorical barbs against the Islamic Republic were “written by Zionists word for word.”

In a speech on Tuesday night in the Iranian province of West Azerbaijan, Rouhani — a key supporter of the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by the former Obama administration — stated that “current US actions against the Iranian nation are not just war and sanctions, but a crime against humanity.”

The Iranian president also alleged that when he last visited New York, “a well-known world leader told me that in his meeting with [Trump] the previous day, the US president had told him not to help Iran for just three months, and there would be no Islamic Republic.”

Rouhani said he responded by telling his interlocutor, “Iran is more united and integrated than at any other time.”

India has ended all imports of oil from Iran, its ambassador in Washington said Thursday, becoming the latest country to grudgingly comply with threatened US sanctions.

India had already sharply decreased its imports from Iran and bought one million tons of crude in April, the last month before Washington stepped up its pressure campaign against Tehran and ended all exemptions to sanctions, Ambassador Harsh Vardhan Shringla said.

Shringla said that energy-hungry India has also ended all imports from Venezuela because it considered itself a partner of the United States — but said the shift had caused pain at home, with Iran formerly supplying 10 percent of India’s oil needs.

Calling Iran “an extended neighbor” of India with longstanding cultural links, Shringla declined to say if New Delhi shared US President Donald Trump’s concerns about Tehran.

Recently, the Qatari Al-Jazeera Media Network apologized for an antisemitic video on the Holocaust that was released via Facebook and Twitter by network affiliate AJ+Arabic. The video questioned the number of Jewish Holocaust victims and added that Israel is the biggest “winner” from the Holocaust and that it uses Nazi justifications for annihilating the Palestinians.

Following MEMRI’s translation and release of the video, Al-Jazeera removed the video from the AJ+ social media accounts, suspended two journalists involved in its production, and stated that that the video “contravened its editorial standards.” [1]

However, MEMRI’s ongoing monitoring of the Qatari media, and particularly of the Al-Jazeera network, reveals that the release of the antisemitic video by AJ+ is no exception. For years, Qatar’s media have served as a platform for the dissemination of antisemitic and Holocaust denial content. Particularly noticeable are extreme antisemitic statements uttered over the years by Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradawi, founder and, until recently, head of the Qatar-backed International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS). Al-Qaradawi, who is considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, is known for praising jihad and martyrdom operations, as well as for antisemitic statements. Born in Egypt, he found asylum and a base for operating in Qatar – where he enjoys the protection and sponsorship of current Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamid Aal Thani and before that of his father, Sheikh Hamid bin Khalifa Aal Thani, who stepped down as emir in 2013 – whereas Western countries, including the U.S., the U.K., and France, have banned him from entering their territory due to his extremist views.

In a January 2009speech, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV, Al-Qaradawi called for a second Holocaust, saying, “Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers” – i.e. the Muslims. Less than two weeks ago, the Qatari government daily Al-Arab published a Ramadan religious lesson by Al-Qaradawi in which he stated that the Jews had opposed Muhammad and therefore Allah cursed them and turned them into apes and pigs.

According to the Canary Mission, several staff members of Al Jazeera and its online channel AJ+ who appeared in the video have expressed “repeated disdain for Jews and Israel” on their social media profiles.

Among those profiled by the Canary Mission include a “filmmaker for Aj+” who has called for violence, glorified the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad, shown support for Hamas and expressed support for terrorists.

A “video editor and sometimes producer at AJ+” has spread anti-Semitism, defended the terrorist organization Hezbollah and expressed support for terrorists, the report says.

A senior producer at Al Jazeera+ has according to the report expressed support for Hamas, promoted terrorists, spread anti-Israel conspiracy theories and defended violent anti-Israel agitators. She has also demonized Zionism and undermined Muslim interfaith dialogue with Jews.

Another journalist in the station has, according to the report, spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, defended Hamas and Hezbollah, glorified terrorists and demonized Israel. In December 2010 she tweeted: “Behind US support for Israel there is a huge Zionist lobby with economic and media power.”

A “social content producer” at AJ+ has spread hatred of Israel, equated Zionism with Nazism and expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement on social media. On March 8, 2013, she tweeted: “Zionism is hate. Zionism is evil. Zionism is the modern-day Nazism. don’t be fooled. the tide is turning [sic].”

On May 22, 2019, Dr. Ahmed Al-Raissouni, head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), posted an article titled “Why It Is Necessary to Question the Holocaust” on the IUMS website and on his personal website and Facebook page. In the article he claimed that the Holocaust has acquired an “exaggerated halo” and that questioning its veracity and scope is not only a right but an obligation. Listing ten reasons to justify this view, he stated, inter alia, that the Holocaust narrative, fabricated by the Zionist movement, has been sanctified and imposed on the world, to the extent that there are “campaigns that slander, intimidate, exclude and besiege anyone who dares to think independently about it or about any of its fake details or statistics.” Moreover, the Holocaust narrative consists of claims that are “politically slanted and questionable” and many of which cannot be verified, he said. He called to subject the issue of the Holocaust to scientific scrutiny, free of all exploitation, threats and intimidation.

The IUMS was founded in 2004 in Dublin, Ireland by Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradawi, who also headed it until recently. Al-Qaradawi, who is considered to be a major ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood, resides in Qatar and has been supported and sponsored for decades by the Qatari regime. The IUMS under his leadership promoted an extremist discourse, including rhetoric against Jews and Christians and encouragement of jihad and martyrdom.[1] This Ramadan, a Qatari daily published a series of religious lessons by Al-Qaradawi, including one in which he claimed that the Jews opposed Allah and He therefore transformed them into apes and pigs, and that the Christians were afflicted by ideological blindness and strayed from the path of righteousness.[2]

It should be noted that the IUMS is supported not only by Qatar but also by Turkey. In an interview Al-Raissouni gave on Al-Jazeera in November 18, 2018, shortly after he replaced Al-Qaradawi as the head of the IUMS, he revealed that Qatar has supported the organization since its inception and that Turkey now funds it as well, and said: “There is nothing wrong with that and we don’t hide it. On the contrary, we are proud of it and we urge all the countries to follow in the footsteps of those two.”[3]

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Earlier this week, thousands of Jewish pilgrims, including 300 Israelis, flocked to the island of Djerba for the annual Lag Ba’Omer pilgrimage to the ancient Al-Ghriba synagogue. It is customary for senior ministers to attend the event, but for the first time, Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed paid a visit. The Jewish Chronicle reports:

You might not expect the Prime Minister of an Arab country to attend a Jewish gathering during the fasting month of Ramadan.

Rene Trabelsi, Tunisia’s Jewish minister of Tourism

But then the festival of the Ghibra, celebrated by the historic Jewish community of Djerba off the southern coast of Tunisia over Lag Ba’Omer, is a unique event. Its unusual coincidence during Ramadan this year made it the ideal opportunity to highlight the country’s pledge of religious co-existence.

Tunisia’s Prime Minister Youssef Chahed hailed Djerba on Wednesday as a “worldwide symbol and example to be followed.”

]]>http://246mag.com/tunisian-prime-minister-attends-al-ghriba-pilgrimage/feed0Sure, Joe Biden Is Friendly, But Is He A Friend of Israel? (Daled Amos)http://246mag.com/sure-joe-biden-is-friendly-but-is-he-a-friend-of-israel-daled-amos
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By Daled Amos

How do we judge if someone — especially a politician — is a friend of Israel?

o Biden’s ties to the Jewish state go back almost 50 years, to his visit to Israel on the eve of the Yom Kippur Waro Biden has personally known every Prime Minister since Golda Meiro Biden talks about his large collection of yarmulkes he has accumulated from attending Jewish functions over the yearso One of Biden’s favorite anecdotes retells his conversation with Golda Meir, where she confided in him “We have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs. You see, we have no place else to go.”o Biden’s friendliness comes in spite of the fact that his state, Delaware, has a Jewish population of only 15,000.

But while he has been friendly with members of the Israeli government, has Biden been supportive of the Israeli government?

From the start, we understand that this is not an issue of backing every decision Israel has made or every action it has taken — but has Biden consistently supported Israel?

a young senator rose and delivered a very impassioned speech – I must say that it’s been a while since I’ve heard such a talented speaker – and he actually supported Operation “Peace for the Galilee” [The Lebanon War]. He even went further, and said that if someone from Canada were to infiltrate into the United States, and kill its citizens all of us (and thus he indicated a circle) would demand attacking them, and we wouldn’t pay attention as to whether men, women or children were killed. That’s what he said.

Begin distanced himself on the spot from what were ostensibly supportive remarks, noting that “according to our values, it is forbidden to hurt women and children, even in war…We did not want to hurt civilians under any circumstances…we never approved a plan knowing that civilians would be hurt directly or on purpose. Unintentionally, that can happen. It must not be denied.”

We know that “young senator” was Joe Biden because Begin went on to recount the famous clash between the two that immediately followed. After overplaying his hand in what was supposed to be a supportive comment, Biden went beyond criticizing Israel. He not only voiced his opposition to the Israeli settlements (a criticism which Begin did not begrudge him), but went on to suggest that he would propose cutting financial aid to Israel because of them. Begin’s rebuke of Biden is famous:

Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us.

Biden’s first comment was an attempt to be ‘friendly.’Biden’s second comment, however, was not the type made by a friend.

Kampeas notes that similarly, Biden made 2 different kinds of statements depending on whether speaking to AIPAC or J Street.

During his speech at AIPAC in 2013, Biden stressed that Netanyahu wanted peace, and the Arabs needed to step up. In fact, if you read the actual speech, Biden — who once threatened Begin he would cut off aid on account of the settlements — not only mentions the settlements, but goes so far as to brag:

As recently as last year, the only country on the United Nations Human Rights Council to vote against — I think it’s 36 countries, don’t hold me to the exact number — but the only country on the Human Rights Council of the United Nations to vote against the establishment of a fact-finding mission on settlements was the United States of America. [emphasis added]

“I firmly believe that the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years — the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures — they’re moving us and, more importantly, they’re moving Israel in the wrong direction,” he said.

At AIPAC he proudly claimed that the US is the sole defender of Israel’s settlement policy, but at J Street Biden turns around and condemns Israel over that very same policy.

There is nothing wrong with Biden criticizing Israel over the settlements.

o But it was presumptuous of him to publicly threaten the leader of a sovereign country.o As a “friend” of Israel, Biden should be consistent in his position and not flip-flop in order to curry favor with the current crowd he is speaking to. US policy has been to refrain from approving of the settlements.o Furthermore, Biden – as a friend of Israel – should not be going around exaggerating the “systematic expansion” of the settlements. In 2012, Peace Now noted on their website For the First Time Since 1990 – the Government is to Approve the Establishment of New Settlements. That number of settlements was 3. If Biden wants to criticize Israel, at the very least he should have gotten his facts straight.

During this mutual admiration society meeting with J Street, Biden talked knowingly about Israel and what “they know in their gut”

In the absence of an Israeli leader like Menachem Begin, Biden feels free to openly speak of what Israel must do, ignoring the changing Israeli electorate that even 3 years ago was showing signs of moving to the right and an unwillingness to unilaterally make concessions to a non-existent peace partner.

“This is not a question for us to tell the Israelis what they can and cannot do,” said the Democratic vice presidential candidate. ”I have faith in the democracy of Israel. They will arrive at the right decision that they view as being in their own interests.”

We have an overwhelming obligation — notwithstanding our sometimes overwhelming frustration with the Israeli government — we have an obligation to push them as hard as we can toward what they know in their gut is the only solution: a two-state solution.

Which of these two stands will Biden adopt during the months leading up to next years election?More importantly, which of these 2 stands would Biden adopt if he should be elected president?

Jonathan Pollard

President Obama was considering clemency, but I told him, ‘Over my dead body are we going to let him out before his time. If it were up to me, he would stay in jail for life. [emphasis added]

One question is whether his claim was accurate, or whether Biden was trying to protect Obama from the ire of the rabbis.

But it is not completely clear from what he said if Biden realized that Pollard was in fact sentenced to life and “his time” would never be up. It simply was not “up to Biden” for Pollard to stay in jail for life, since that was, in fact, his sentence, despite the plea deal he had made and the US government had violated.

Giving Obama Credit For Bush’s Agreement

Another example of Biden’s misstatement of fact is when he told AIPAC in 2013:

President Obama last year requested $3.1 billion in military assistance for Israel — the most in history.

At the time, the actual record was held by the Clinton administration, which in 2000 gave Israel $3.12 billion “which is not only slightly more in nominal dollars but much more in inflation-adjusted dollars”

More to the point, Biden was crediting Obama for something that Bush had done:

Biden is also taking credit for a level of spending that was set by the Bush administration as part of a 10-year, $30 billion agreement reached with Israel in 2007. In requesting $3.1 billion in his fiscal 2013 budget last February, Obama was honoring that agreement.

Hamas and Hezbollah

Here’s what the president [Bush] said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, “Big mistake. Hamas will win. You’ll legitimize them.” What happened? Hamas won.

When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

Another absurdly wrong statement from Joe “Foreign Policy Expert” Biden, who very obviously does not know the difference between the Gaza Strip [where Hamas rules] and the West Bank [where the PA rules]

But Biden didn’t get Hezbollah quite right either —

o First, the US did not kick Hezbollah out of Lebanon.o Second, if Hezbollah was kicked out, how would it be able to fill that vacuum Biden warns about?

In 2001, there were around 95,000 Jewish births in Israel and 41,000 Arab births. Just seven years later, in 2008, Jewish births had risen to over 117,000, but Arab births had declined to less than 40,000. In a period that constitutes barely a quarter of a generation, Arab births had fallen from around 30 percent of the total to around 25 percent. This has been a steady trend and, should it continue, it will only be a very short time before Jewish and Arab births each year are broadly proportionate to the overall balance of Jews and Arabs in the population as whole – that is, 4:1, or 80 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

But the problem with Joe Biden goes beyond his misstatements and insistence he knows better than Israel what is best for it.

The issue is not that Biden does not support Israeli policy, but rather the kinds of actions Biden has actively taken that are directly against Israeli interests

Does Joe Biden Really Support Putting The Western Wall Under Palestinian Control?

Biden took an active part in US support for the UN vote on Resolution 2334, which was passed at the end of Obama’s term in office thanks to the US abstention. That resolution did more than just condemn Israeli settlements.

A wealth of evidence is now emerging that, far from simply abstaining from a UN vote, which is how the Administration and its press circle at first sought to characterize its actions, the anti-Israel resolution was actively vetted at the highest levels of the U.S. Administration, which then led a pressure campaign—both directly and through Great Britain—to convince other countries to vote in favor of it.

Tablet has confirmed that one tangible consequence of the high-level U.S. campaign was a phone call from Vice President Joseph Biden to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which succeeded in changing Ukraine’s vote from an expected abstention to a “yes.” According to one U.S. national security source, the Obama Administration needed a 14-0 vote to justify what the source called “the optics” of its own abstention.

Among its many “biased and false” clauses, he recalled, the resolution designated Israel’s presence in parts of Jerusalem liberated in 1967 as a flagrant violation under international law. That included Jerusalem’s Old City and Jewish Quarter, as well as the Western Wall, the last remnant of the temple first built by King Solomon some 3,000 years ago

A pity that in this case, Biden went along instead of telling Obama “over my dead body.” But the question is whether Biden has actually thought through the ramifications of his position on the settlements.

The Senate approved a resolution on Wednesday urging the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, and lawmakers briefly set aside partisan differences to approve a measure calling for stepped-up diplomacy to forge a political solution in Iraq.

Also called for economic sanctions.

Among those voting against it was Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said he feared that the administration could use the measure to justify military action against Iran.

It would be a good idea to hear Biden articulate just what he would be prepared to do to counteract Iran’s support of global terrorism in general and support of Hezbollah and Hamas in particular.

Biden vs. AIPAC?

AIPAC does not speak for the entire American Jewish community. There’s other organizations as strong and as consequential.

What other organizations?Was he referring to J Street — which had only just been founded the year before?

Biden also claimed that despite any occasional claims to the contrary, AIPAC does not speak for Israel. He did not elaborate on that one.

In any case, Biden and AIPAC patched things up, but it is obvious that it is J Street and not AIPAC that he is listening to.

Biden & Sharpton

On the other hand, Biden has apparently had no problems with Al Sharpton, whose anti-Jewish incitement played a role in both the Crown Heights Riots and the Freddie’s Fashion Mart Massacre.

Sharpton and Biden. Screengrab from Facebook

It was in part as a result of his many visits to Obama at the White House that Sharpton’s image was rehabilitated, and Biden is far from being the only one of the Democratic candidates to seek Sharpton’s endorsement.

But this serves as a reminder that Biden’s claim to friendship with Israel does not outweigh certain political considerations.

The bottom line is that Biden is a staunch opponent of the Israeli settlements. If elected, he would not be the first president to oppose them. The issue is what policies he might pursue, based on actions he has taken and the statements he has made. Biden was willing to actively support UN Resolution 2334. That raises the question of where he stands on the real-world implications of that stand.

Biden told an appreciative J Street that “we have an obligation to push them as hard as we can toward what they know in their gut is the only solution: a two-state solution.” It is not hard to imagine Biden ignoring the implications of Netanyahu’s re-election for what Israelis actually do know “in their gut” and instead pushing what he “knows” is the only solution — with the aid of the same J Street that once bragged about being the “blocking back” for Obama.

That is not to say that none of the other Democratic candidates might try the same thing, but Biden has the reputation of being a “friend” of Israel that would shield him from a lot of the resultant criticism.

It is the fact that so many seem to buy into Biden’s “friend of Israel” shtick that can be so disconcerting.

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]]>http://246mag.com/sure-joe-biden-is-friendly-but-is-he-a-friend-of-israel-daled-amos/feed0Suddenly, Hamas pretends to care about the safety of kids at the "March of Return"http://246mag.com/suddenly-hamas-pretends-to-care-about-the-safety-of-kids-at-the-march-of-return
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Ma’an reports that the organizers of the weekly March of Return have instructed parents not to bring kids outside the tents that are set up at a distance from the fence, because of the heat wave in the region.

Khalid Al-Batsh, Chairman of the High Commission for Return and Breaking the Siege, said: “In order to ensure the safety of our people participating today in the activities of the 59th Friday, we send the most important message to continue the process of liberation and return …We ask them to stay inside the covered return tents in the five camps throughout the period.”

Funny how they are concerned for kids’ safety from the sun but not from ricocheting bullets or tear gas.

Kids getting injured or killed by Israelis is the entire point of the riots. If they die from heatstroke it does no one any good.

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Islamic Jihad has a photo essay of its “mujhadeen” participating in Ramadan Iftar meals, studying the Quran and praying with their masks and machine guns: (I’m not sure how they can eat with their mouths covered…)

I have never seen a Muslim complain about how terrorists are co-opting sacred Muslim rituals to make themselves look pious. Nor have I seen any Muslim complain that it is incongruous to say that Ramadan is a time for peaceful reflection and piousness while holding automatic weapons.

Maybe I am looking in the wrong places, though.

Are any Muslims upset when they see things like this, or do all Muslims look at this and think it is an appropriate way to mark Ramadan?

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]]>http://246mag.com/do-muslims-get-upset-when-terrorists-associate-themselves-with-ramadan/feed0“You Have the Watches, But We Have the Time"http://246mag.com/you-have-the-watches-but-we-have-the-time
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To quote from this report, citing a blog by the Swedish journalist Ingrid Carlqvist, Somalian-born Swede Mona Walter, a convert to Christianity from Islam, has been trying in vain to convince Swedes that mass Islamic immigration imperils their country’s future, preferring to bury their heads in the sand than confront her stark warning that

“Islam will take over in 50 years. The demography is very clear – in 100 years it’s game over”

Warns Mona:

‘For many years I have tried to get the Swedes to understand what the Muslim goal is – to take over your country. The first thing they will do is demand Sharia courts, just like in the UK…. If Sweden recognises Sharia courts the Muslims will have new demands, like permission to rule their own enclaves without interference from the Swedish society. The end goal is for Sharia to rule all of Sweden….What Muslim politicians want is to change the laws so that Muslims in Sweden get permission to live under Sharia law. They want to rule their own areas without having to obey the secular laws of Sweden.That is the long-term goal and Islam has lots of patience. As they say: “You have the watches, but we have the time”.Before the election on September 9 last year most Swedish journalists were hysterical about the Nazi party Nordic Resistance Movement. They got 2,106 votes, clearly showing that Swedes are not interested in National socialism.But no one seems scared by the fact that Sweden now have approximately one million Muslims in the country, of which many have infiltrated the political parties to promote their own interests. The question is when Muslims will form their own party in Sweden….’

Ms Carlqvist, who will be no stranger to long-time readers of my blog (her video appearances attest that she’s a lady as easy on the ear and eye as she’s plucky and perspicacious), points out, meanwhile, inter alia here, that in 2018

“Leila Ali Elmi, a 30-year-old Somali woman, took a seat in the Swedish parliament last Sunday without uttering one word in Swedish during her campaign.”

And here‘s an article that typifies Ms Carlqvist’s opposition to the anti-Israel stance of Sweden’s Margot Wallstrom and cronies.